Page 136 of Never a Hero

‘It didn’t matter who he killed,’ Joan said slowly. ‘It was the killing that mattered. You only wanted him more and more free of the constrictions of the timeline.’

Joan thought of how Aaron had thrown a stone into the canal and told them to watch the ripples fading. She imagined Nick now as a ripple that couldn’t be smoothed over. The changes he’d caused stayed changed. She shivered.

It hit her then that she’d changed the timeline by unmaking Nick. Was that why she’d been able to do it? Because Nick was special? Because he was a weak point on the timeline?

‘What did you make me for?’ Nick said, jolting Joan from her thoughts. ‘What change did you want me to make? You need me to bring back the Graves? How? What am I supposed to do?’

Eleanor’s smile was small and private like she was laughing at an inside joke.

‘Why did you bring us here?’ Joan said suddenly. She’d been expecting Eleanor to try to change a significant event. To change something. But she’d just been standing here, talking to them.

‘Honestly?’ Eleanor said. ‘I could have done this anywhere. But I thought it would be poetic to change the timeline where the King did it. To bring our family back here—on our own territory—in the very place where he killed the first of us. And when I create the new timeline, no one will touch our family again. Not the King. Not humans. Not anyone.’

Joan’s next breath shook. She saw Eleanor’s full vision now.

The timeline they’d seen through the window wasn’t a mistake. Its horrors weren’t a terrible by-product of Eleanor’s plan to bring back the Graves. That world would be exactly as Eleanor wished it to be.

Eleanor wanted to create a world where the Graves would never again question what she’d called their birthright: a world where monsters would steal life with impunity; where humans and monsters would never imagine coming together in peace; where nothing like the past would ever happen again.

And maybe the Graves would live again, but it would be a nightmare for humans. Joan pictured that terrible street: the blond man’s terror and his resignation. He’d known that the monster would drain his life; he’d known that his body would be tossed into the back of the van like rubbish.

‘We won’t let you create a world where monsters reign,’ Nick said to Eleanor, anger thickening his voice.

He was right. ‘We can’t let you do it,’ Joan said.

Eleanor’s mouth twisted. ‘You really do always choose the wrong side, Joan.’

Before Joan could even think of the next step, there was a blur of movement to her right. Nick rushed at Eleanor, and Tom was just a moment behind. They’d been in quiet communication while Eleanor had been talking.

Almost as fast, they were both thrown violently back into the alley by an invisible force.

‘Tom!’ Jamie said, reaching for him.

Joan scrambled to Nick unthinkingly. He was already getting to his feet. Tom had fallen on his side to prevent Frankie from being crushed. She jumped out of Tom’s knapsack, her stubby tail wagging as if Tom had been playing a game.

Tom glared at a dark-haired woman standing behind Eleanor with her hands raised.

‘Quite the master of the Ali power,’ Tom growled at the woman.

‘I don’t want to kill you, Tom Hathaway,’ the woman said to him. ‘I know your sister is an Ali.’

‘That’s your one warning,’ Eleanor said to them matter-of-factly. ‘Try that again, and someone gets shot.’ She looked meaningfully at Jamie and then Joan, and Tom made a rumbling sound at the back of his throat. Nick glared at Eleanor like he was going to kill her.

‘There’s no point in fighting me anyway,’ Eleanor said. ‘The change is already in motion. It started when you brought him here.’

‘What?’ Joan said.

In answer, Eleanor took a step back from them and lifted her eyes. The sky had lightened to dull white. Shouldn’t it have been brighter by now, though? It hit Joan that she hadn’t heard any background sounds for some minutes: the river and the docks had gone silent. Near St Magnus, a steamship had been pulling from the wharf. Now, it was unmoving. Grey smoke stood above its chimney in a frozen swirl.

Eleanor saw Joan staring. ‘You are so far out of your league in this timeline,’ she said almost gently. ‘Have you even figured out your own powers yet? What you can do?’ She swiped at the air, the gesture almost dismissive. And as she did, the familiar, unbearable buzz of dissonance hit.

Joan gasped as she realised what Eleanor had just done. There’d been an Ali seal above them this whole time. Eleanor had opened it as easily as wiping steam from glass. She was so much stronger than Joan had understood. And, by opening the seal, she’d revealed a vast tear in the timeline above them.

Aaron groaned with nausea. Jamie and Ruth bent double. Even Nick paled.

The tears at the café and at Holland House had been tiny in comparison. This one rent the sky—a scar of blue among white clouds.

Eleanor’s hands were up, and Joan could almost see the power streaming from her, ripping open the seal to reveal more and more of that torn sky.

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